The present disclosure generally relates to transmissions for automotive vehicles. More particularly, an electrically-actuated dual input clutch transmission is disclosed.
A number of vehicles have been assembled with manual transmission or transaxle products. Typically, many development hours and dollars are expended to precisely fit a transmission within a particular vehicle. Components connected to or positioned near the transmission have particular characteristics to function in concert with each other. If a different transmission is subsequently desirable, changes to multiple components may be required depending upon the scope of the change of the transmission.
Furthermore, time and cost may be associated with the design, development and tooling required to produce components within the earlier transmission design. Much of this tooling is dedicated to producing only the particular transmission component for which it was initially constructed. A design change may render this tooling useless.
A number of dual clutch transmissions have been designed to automate the shifting process and provide a power shift between sequentially numbered drive ratios. However, the resulting transmission may be substantially longer than a manual transmission having the same number of drive ratios. A relatively large delay in vehicle production release and increase in cost may result if a change from the standard manual transmission to one of the known dual clutch transmissions is executed. Accordingly, it may be desirable to economically provide an automatic transmission to further advance the field.